Part 15 (1/2)

”Have you been up to that cabin again?” asked Owen, suspiciously.

”I suppose I might as well tell you that I've laid a little plan that, if it only turns out well, may bag the unknown visitor we had last night,” Max confessed. ”You see, when we were up there the other day, I noticed that old as it was, the cabin was as strong as anything. If a fellow could only slip up, and shoot a bar across the door in any way after _some one_ went inside, it'd be dollars to doughnuts he'd find the chap there in the morning.”

”And when would you do all this fine slipping-up business?” asked Steve.

”I'm going there again to-night,” Max continued, positively; ”and lie around to see what happens. And none of you need say a single word, because you don't come along with me. When I've managed to secure that door as I've arranged for, it'll be time enough to let you know about it. Forget it now, boys; and let's talk about supper.”

Bandy-legs stared hard at Max, as though he could not believe his ears.

That anyone would dare venture all the way up to that strange cabin in the darkness of the night, and even try and capture the desperate ruffian whom they now believed to be an escaped convict, amazed him.

Sure enough, that night, about the time the boys under ordinary conditions would be thinking of seeking their blankets, Max quietly took his gun and vanished from the sight of his chums.

He had taken particular note of every step of the route along the bank with this night journey in view. And he felt now that he could silently make his way along without anything bordering upon an accident. Had any of the others been with him a clumsy mis-step was apt to create trouble; and Bandy-legs in particular was always getting into a mess.

Max had reached a point about halfway up the sh.o.r.e of Catamount Island when he suddenly stopped short and crouched low. Surely that was the low sound of voices coming to his ear. And he immediately recognized the fact that the murmur must be carried across the water, which is such a splendid conveyer of sounds.

Then some persons must be coming off from the sh.o.r.e in a boat! His mind went back to what Steve had seen of the two men in gray uniforms. Were they about to land on the island now, bent upon recapturing the desperate man who was hiding there.

Max had just about come to this decision when he had occasion to alter his views of the matter. He heard a peculiar little cough, which struck him as mighty familiar. Their old enemy, Ted Shafter, had an odd way of making such a sound; and there were those who said it was caused by smoking so many cigarettes. Did this cigarette cough mean that Ted and his two cronies were coming to play a practical joke on the campers of Catamount Island?

CHAPTER XII.

A BOLD PLAN.

”Hold on, fellers! Let's get a line on what this rotten old sh.o.r.e looks like,” Max plainly heard Ted Shafter say, in a low tone.

The oars continued to dip in the water, for unless this were done continually the swift current would carry the boat downstream rapidly enough.

Looking closely at the point from whence the sound proceeded Max believed he could make out an object that seemed darker than the surroundings. This then must be the boat in which the three boys had pulled all the way up from Carson; a job not to be sneered at, considering the weight of the craft, and the strength of the current.

”Hang the luck, Ted, I can't see anything but just a solid blur,”

remarked another of the occupants of the boat; and Max knew that it was Shack Beggs, whose father was an engineer in one of the works at Carson, who made this disgusted remark.

”I can see trees, and I think some rocks,” said a third one, undoubtedly Amiel Toots; for he had a soft oily voice, just as Amiel was a soft oily boy, treacherous by nature, and only faithful to Ted because he really feared the big bully.

”That accounts for the whole bunch of them,” Max was saying to himself, and at the same time endeavoring to figure out how he could give the three rowdies a scare that would send them flying down the river, not to come back again.

Max thought he saw a way of accomplis.h.i.+ng this much-to-be-desired end.

He had in his pocket several flashlight powders that he had intended using in the line of photography, if the occasion ever arose for trying to take a picture during the period of darkness. With them he also carried a clever little arrangement fas.h.i.+oned after the style of a pistol, whereby with a pressure of one finger the flash could be brought about.

There, they were talking again, after all of them had been trying their hardest to make out the conformation of the sh.o.r.e near which they were at the time.

”Reckon yuh must move in a little closer, Ted, if so be yuh 'spect us tuh see just where tuh land,” Shack remarked.

”Don't you think we ought to go a little slow about landing?” remarked Amiel, who evidently had certain fears of his own, which same caused his soft oily voice to quiver painfully.

”Aw! what's the matter with you?” grated Ted, savagely. ”Just acause them fellers go to talkin' 'bout ghosts and all that stuff, you're afraid, that's what! Sho! didn't we see Max Hastings and his crowd there on the foot of the plagued island? If they could stay here two nights a'ready, what's a-goin' to hurt us inside of only one hour, tell me that, hey?”